. . . Oh aww. I loved this school story. Even though it is set in the 1930s and is chock full of Blytonesque midnight feasts and hockey games, it does bring the genre up to date with a contemporary sense of genuine peril and danger. It feels both delightfully old-fashioned and current – a difficult balance to pull off, but it’s been done with style here. Imagine Agatha Christie visiting Mallory Towers and add in some modern sensibilities and you are about there. For example, Murder Most UnLadylike also covers casual racism – Hazel is from Hong Kong and has had a harder than expected time fitting in at Deepdean – and low level bullying in a very practical, non-judgemental way. Many of the tropes of the school story genre are subtly updated throughout the book and I really appreciated how cleverly it was done.

The plot twists and turns like nobody’s business and I didn’t guess the real culprit for a very long time, but the real draw is the relationship between the two main characters. Daisy and Hazel are like chalk and cheese but they are perfect foils for one another and together, they make a brilliant detective duo. They bicker but always make it up in the end.

This is one for all the many readers who love a good school story. Murder Most UnLadylike isn’t a good school story, however: it’s a flippin’ great school story!
(Jill Murphy, The Bookbag)